Tom & Halle get personal

Stephen Schaefer Friday, October 26, 2012

Cloud Atlas finds Tom Hanks and Halle Berry leading a cast where actors shine in multiple roles, traveling through six different storylines and time zones. It’s kind of wonderful, entrancing even. As the two stars were interviewed together at the Beverly Hilton I couldn’t help but remark how Hanks is rarely in the news except when there’s a new movie to promote while Halle, we hear about you all the time.

Berry: Why?

Hanks: Because she’s hounded by thugs, that’s why.

Q: How do you feel about your celebrity with the media? Has the media made you what you are in a way? I mean you both won Oscars. You both have had great artistic success. Is it that you’re a bigger than life character that people are fascinated by what happens to you?

Hanks: Oh, please. There’s money to be made off of hounding this pretty girl. That’s what it comes down to. There’s money to be made after persecuting a woman trying to raise her daughter. It’s an ugly, ugly fact. I drive past, often times on Sunset Boulevard, a preschool. There is usually often times a platoon of 18 to 32 very thuggy looking guys who are trying to make money with their long sports lenses off of someone trying to take their daughter or their son to preschool. I can’t tell you how loathsome I think that makes me feel. It’s one thing, we go to premieres, take our picture. We go out to dinner, take our picture. That’s fine. We show up all the time. If we’re out doing something, go ahead. But if you’re going to follow us just because we’re a pretty girl or we’ve had a kid or our boyfriend or girlfriend has something that’s coming up, I think that’s ludicrous.

Q: But it’s the kiss and the curse of success. The kiss and curse of extreme beauty. You can’t get away from it.

Berry: Well, here’s the thing. I’ve never wanted to get away from it. I want my daughter away from it because she hasn’t made a choice to be in this business. She needs to grow up as a little girl and afforded all the normalcies of every other kid. It’s my job as her mother to provide that for her at whatever cost. That’s what I’m going to do. What’s not fair is what happens to children. They shouldn’t be subject to that. Me, I’m not complaining about me. I can deal. I’m a grown up. She’s four. She doesn’t even understand. She has no mechanisms to deal with this. I don’t want my daughter to be the guinea pig and when she’s 18 she’s a hot damn mess because I didn’t take her out of it when I have the wherewithal to do that. That’s too high of a price for me to even consider paying for her.

Hanks: You only see the photographs. You don’t hear what those guys yell. You do not hear what they scream at you.

Q: Oh, we know those guys.

Berry: Yeah. That a little girl shouldn’t hear.

Q: Saying horrible things to try to get a reaction from you. How did you avoid that having little kids?

Hanks: First of all, I’m not pretty. I’m not a world class beauty, ladies and gentleman. I’m just a guy. I was slow going and stuff like that. I was just never that brand of news. I didn’t land...

Q: You’re boring, Tom, is that what you’re saying?

Berry: I’m really boring. I do nothing.

Q: What do you know now that you didn’t know at 18, just for the kids out there?

Hanks: I didn’t realize at 18 that girls want to have sex too. I thought it was a total one way street.